


Commitment

by thedevilchicken



Category: Avengers (Comics)
Genre: Bets & Wagers, First Dates, Friends to Lovers, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-19
Updated: 2011-04-19
Packaged: 2018-04-06 19:27:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,424
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4233834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedevilchicken/pseuds/thedevilchicken
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Contrary to popular belief, Tony hates first dates.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Commitment

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted to Livejournal on 19 April 2011.
> 
> Assumes a setting somewhere between 616 and Marvel Adventures: Avengers - I'll let you decide what that means!

Contrary to popular belief, Tony hates first dates. 

The problem is, he generally doesn't _date_ per se; he "meets for drinks," yes, and "does lunch" or just plain balls-out invites over for sex. But the thing with Tony is that he doesn't _date_ at all, not in the sense that requires a first one because the tag "first" is to imply that more of them should follow and that's coming dangerously close to a relationship. 

Tony doesn't do relationships. He does liaisons, rendez-vous, the odd fifteen minutes in concert hall cloakrooms and airplane bathrooms and clothing store changing rooms here and there, but he doesn't do relationships. The thought of being with one woman for the rest of his life usually makes his palms feel sweaty, and not in the good way. 

Which, he supposes, is why his palms feel sweaty now. And why he can't sit still, why he's nibbled through two bread rolls like a hyperactive mouse in the space of twenty minutes, drunk three rather large glasses of water already and is currently wondering if a persistent need to pee will get him out of this even though he knows he's the one who started it. 

It was, essentially, a joke. 

Logan, beer in hand, sprawling there on the couch like nothing so much as a belligerent old dog, made some comment about Tony sneaking in late last night; Pete snickered and thus it began. How on earth they managed to rehash all the various low points of Tony's love life within the space of about three minutes was beyond him, though it was just typical that Logan chose that particular topic to turn garrulous. Pete didn't need much egging on, frankly, but Logan did it extremely well. 

"Bet ya think ya can seduce any woman in the world, dontcha."

Logan smirked, took a sip of his beer and fluttered his lashes. The effect was somewhere between disturbing and hilarious and was probably the only reason Tony didn't just exit stage right and continue on his search for caffeine. He was kind of creepily amused, which right now he's pretty damn sure was his downfall. 

"Oh, I don't know," Pete chimed in. "I mean, looking at his track record, seducing _women_ 's kind of easy. For the night, at least."

The pair exchanged a glance that Tony did not like the look of in the least. Suddenly he felt substantially less nonchalant than he had done, leaning there in the doorway.

"Kid's right," Logan conceded, reaching for another beer. He popped off the cap using the side of the coffee table, gouging the wood and that was probably on purpose. "How about it, Stark? I got..." Logan leaned back, fumbled for his wallet in the hip pocket of his jeans; he pulled out a twenty and slapped it down on the table, hard enough to make at least one leg creak. "...twenty bucks that says ya can't get a guy--"

"A decent guy."

"--a _decent_ guy--"

"A guy we choose."

Logan shot Pete a glare. Pete, to his credit, didn't look shaken in the least. 

"--a guy we _choose_ , to date ya."

It was preposterous, of course. Tony really had nothing to prove and it wasn't like he was short twenty bucks, but that just wasn't the point; he'd been challenged and his pride didn't enjoy the idea of admitting defeat to Logan and Peter Parker of all possible people. The smirking Canadian would never let him live it down, after all, and Pete had just enough wit and cheek to make it stick. 

He agreed. He'd told himself that taking Logan's money would make him feel good but for the moment, sitting there in the middle of the empty restaurant, he'd gladly give up his twenty whole dollars and roughly half his pride to just get out of there before his date arrives. He's been had.

The morning after the bet, Logan and Pete had come up with a plan. They ambushed him in his workshop, Logan looking exceedingly smug for someone so small and so hairy, Pete just looking vastly amused, and they told him in whose direction they'd decided he should aim his well-honed talents. Tony sighed as the unlikely conspirators left the room. He didn't think Steve was going to enjoy this.

"Hey, you want to catch a movie sometime?"

Steve chuckled and crossed his arms over his chest. 

"Crap, they told you."

"Of course they did." Steve looked amused, which Tony guessed was at least a good thing. "You really think they'd make this easy for you?"

Tony sighed and took a seat at the dining table; Steve did likewise, settling a cup of coffee in front of Tony as he did so. He gathered the newspaper, left strewn there rather haphazardly by parties unknown, and started with the funny pages the way he always did, something to do with needing a lift before he started the serious stuff that brought him back down to earth. Tony was pretty sure Steve was never anything but down to earth but he had a feeling he'd take that the wrong way. 

"I didn't expect it to be _easy_." He took a sip of the coffee, burned his mouth and cursed under his breath; Steve raised his brows over the top of the newspaper and Tony gave a half-apologetic shrug. "But c'mon, this is sabotage. How do I get you to agree to this if--"

"If they got to me first?"

"Well, I wasn't going to put it like that."

Steve snickered, which wasn't exactly the manliest sound he'd ever made. "You were going to cheat and tell me anyway, admit it," he said. "Appealing to my good nature to win a bet with Logan was never going to work, you know that."

"Logan _and Pete_." 

"And that makes a difference?"

"It was worth a try."

They sat in silence after that, Tony drinking his coffee and playing with his phone, Steve reading the newspaper as he seemed to do quasi-religiously every single day it was feasible. Tony's email was all budget report this, fundraiser that, Pepper with the results of product testing and reminding him about an upcoming board meeting... it was easy enough to zone out and not concentrate too hard on the prospect of Logan's smug smile. Until Steve coughed, that is, an attention-getting cough because honestly Tony had a hard time remembering if he'd ever known Steve get sick. 

"So you're just giving up?" Steve asked, folding the paper closed. 

Tony took a moment to mull that over, setting his phone down carefully on the table top.

"That was the general idea," he replied, careful not to frown, quirk a brow or otherwise express his curiosity. "Am I wrong?"

"It does seem defeatist."

Steve stood. A moment's pause, an unreadable little smile playing at his lips and he walked away, leaving Tony wondering what on earth to do next. 

He asked him out that evening. Admittedly, it was just a repeat of his invitation to the movies, but in roughly three minutes Steve had dissected the trailers every film currently showing and had nothing flattering to say about any of them. Tony supposed he was vaguely relieved in a way, which could have had something to do with how touchy-feely dramas and kids' films made his skin crawl, but he wasn't quite ready to admit defeat. After all, Steve had only said he didn't want to see a movie - that wasn't a flat-out no. 

"If not a movie, how about brunch?" he asked the next day, toying with his armour as Steve polished his shield somewhere across the room. Steve looked up and the expression on his face told Tony this wasn't going to be pretty; Steve had a theory that brunch was created by businessmen to give them a reason to flee the office mid-morning and leave the real work to their assistants while they sat around drinking wine and while Tony wasn't convinced that Steve actually meant a word of it, it was enough to put him off his stride. It wasn't until later that he realised Steve hadn't actually said no. 

"So, lunch?"

"And you think _now_ 's an appropriate time to ask?"

Tony gave that some thought as he backhanded a Doombot and sighed inside the armour. 

"Okay, so maybe the timing's a little off," he said. Yelled. "But c'mon, Cap! You've gotta eat sometime."

"Wolverine's ordering pizza."

Tony rolled his eyes, the dramatic effect of which was rather stifled by the fact that Steve really couldn't see him. Perhaps he could build that feature into the suit. 

"You can't skip it?"

"I _like_ pizza!"

And so it went on. Three days, four days, six days, a week of asking and vague refusals, Logan's smirk and Steve's amused little smile; Tony was running out of things to invite him to and Pepper was getting impatient with the way he was keeping his schedule clear just in case. 

"Why are you doing this?" she asked him, on the phone from the office as he lay semi-defeated on the couch in his workshop. "Is Wolverine not being right really so important?"

"I just don't want to lose," he told her. It sounded weak even to him. "Maybe he's got a limited memory about himself, but that won't stop him remembering this forever."

Steve chuckled from across the room, where he was leaning at the frame of the door. Tony glanced at him, gave Pepper a faint apology that still definitely did not include the word sorry, and hung up as she was roughly mid-sentence. Steve just looked so hopelessly amused. 

"What's so damn funny, Rogers?" he asked, sounding every inch as not terribly ticked off as he felt. There was just something about the whole situation that didn't sit well with him, like he'd somehow been manipulated all along and if there was one thing in the world that he hated it was being played. Of course, there were many, many things in the world that Tony hated, and he tended to be quite vocal on that point. 

"You." Steve watched him from the doorway, arms crossed over his chest, apparently perfectly relaxed. "You don't want to do this but you're going ahead with it anyway. Can't you just admit defeat?"

"I thought you were the one encouraging me to keep going."

"And you thought that was a _good_ idea?"

Tony sighed, leaned forward and dropped his head into his hands, running his fingers through his hair. "Fine, I'll talk to Logan." He gave his hair a tug. "Great. He wins. Whatever."

"Have dinner with me." 

Tony looked up, only as far as his chin resting on his hand for the first moment but Steve, though that same amused expression lingered on his face, didn't seem to be mocking him. That was odd. He sat up further, frowning faintly. 

"You can't be serious."

Steve shrugged. "Why not?"

"Because I've been asking you out all week, that's why not."

Steve fixed him in his gaze, suddenly looking a lot less amused. For a guy who stood over six feet tall, who couldn't look weak if he tried, who embodied courage and bravery and _punched Hitler in the face_ , Steve was doing a good job of looking downright vulnerable at that precise moment. "For a bet, Tony," he said. "That was for a bet."

Tony paused. He took a breath, and he thought about that. He wasn't so dense that he didn't know what it meant. 

Thirty seconds later, as Steve was halfway out the door, he said yes. Steve smiled and that made him smile too; Tony just couldn't regret his decision.

The restaurant's empty, aside from the maitre d' and a hovering waiter who's clearly trying not to look intrigued. And there Tony sits, toying with his phone though honestly he's too keyed up to be distracted by it. He's been suspecting for the last twenty-five minutes that Steve's in league with Logan and Pete, that Pepper's made some kind of threat about heartbreak that's scared him off, that in the end Steve was just playing some kind of cruel joke, but then the door opens and in he steps. 

Steve's never worn suits well. He looks good in them, that much is true, but he never looks completely at home in them the way that Tony does; Steve's wearing one now, a kind of steel grey that makes him look older than he is or at least older than he usually appears. Tony tries to focus on the amusement value of dating a senior citizen but Steve looks at him, really _looks_ at him, and his amusement goes straight out the window. 

"I was starting to think you'd stood me up," Tony says, and he fails at sounding casual. There's nothing casual about this.

"I wanted to make sure you had time to think it through," Steve replies. The waiter seats him and vanishes discreetly. "I'm not a one night stand, Tony. You know that."

He does. It's why his palms are sweaty, why he almost wishes he were anywhere else but here. And maybe Steve thinks he's scared; he is, there's no way he can deny that, but the reason Steve thinks he's scared just is not the reason at all. 

"I know."

He leans forward on the table top, lets the back of his hand brush Steve's palm. He almost turns red, maybe he would have were that actually part of Tony Stark's constitution, laughs at himself under his breath instead. 

He's not scared of commitment, not the way Steve thinks he is. He's not scared of what it means for his sexuality, perhaps because that's always been pretty fluid behind closed doors. He's just scared he'll screw this up, because when it matters he always does. He's seen their entire relationship in a flash, felt Steve's hands on him, felt their friendship expand to encompass something he's tried not to contemplate but can't deny he wants. He's seen himself fuck it up in a hundred different ways. He'll miss him when it finally ends.

Steve covers his hand with his, squeezes briefly and Tony can't help but smile. Steve's stronger than Tony is in every way that counts. Maybe he understands more than Tony gave him credit for. He’s saved him so many times before; maybe he can even save him from making a total ass of himself. 

Tony raises his glass. "Here's to the second date," he says.


End file.
